


carcinogenic

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Category: The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which you can go home again, and sometimes you feel like you have to, but if you've changed enough in the meantime, it might not be a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	carcinogenic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> No archive warnings, but this does deal with minor character death and canon-typical allusions to drugs and violence. 
> 
> staypainted, I'm sorry I didn't manage to write you any porn for these two (hopefully someone else has!) but here, have some weirdly non-linear emotions. I know you said no heavy angst, but you also wanted these guys dealing with the fallout of the events of the movie, and I wasn't sure how to deal with that without dipping into the angst a bit, so I did my best to walk the line, there. Hopefully it works for you. Happy yuletide!

Jason breathes out smoke, and it smells sharp and clean, the way cigarette smoke always does to A.J.

_That’s fuckin’ weird,_ Jason told him once, when he mentioned it, nudging his shoulder and grinning. _You know they’re, like, gonna give me cancer and then I’ll die, right? Nothing clean about it,_ and A.J. has heard the same words from so many mouths when it comes to smoking, but at that moment it had made something seize up in his chest—the thought of Jason’s lungs turning blackened and cracked like the illustration in all the scare-tactic PSAs, of Jason’s life getting shorter.

Today, though, the smell is a comfort, and the smoke, when he snags Jason’s hand and draws the cigarette to his own lips, is even more so. Usually, Jason would point out that A.J. has his own pack in his own pocket, or just smack his hand away and glare wordlessly, but A.J. guesses he’s earned a little leeway, since they’re at the reception after his father’s funeral.

Might as well play the part, anyway. “Never thought the old bastard would actually kick it,” he muses out loud, taking another drag off Jason’s cigarette.

Jason nods, offers the cigarette again, and drops his head down onto A.J.’s shoulder, quiet and loose, and A.J. thinks he shouldn’t feel so _glad_ at his father’s funeral, but this moment, hiding out on the same balcony he’d hid out on during holidays as a teenager, he’s got Jason leaning against his side and letting A.J. hold onto his hand to bring the cigarette to his lips instead of holding it for himself—in this moment, A.J. is _lucky_ in a way he was never meant to be when he was the fuckup of a kid that Jason first met, and he is stupidly, giddily grateful.

Jason told him about alternate universes, once, leaned back into the grimy expanse of A.J.’s sheets, back when it was just A.J.’s bed, in A.J.’s apartment and Jason’s things were only just slowly, quietly making their way into A.J.’s spaces. Jason had leaned back into A.J.’s bed and blown sticky-heavy smoke rings off a joint up towards A.J.’s ceiling and explained about the idea that for every choice you make there is another universe where you make a different one.

Sometimes A.J. thinks about his alternate universe self, in a world where Jason chose not to forgive him for being such a dick when they were kids, where A.J. never found Jason again, where A.J. found him, and Jason wasn’t pissed or anything, he just didn’t like A.J. that much.

In an alternate universe, A.J. was at this thing alone this morning, avoiding the side of the room with the open casket, avoiding the other side, too, because that was where his mother was, and he can’t imagine that a universe without Jason in his life would make him want to talk to her more, not less. In an alternate universe, A.J. has already left the building, left his suit jacket on the porch, driven into town, gotten drunk, gotten high, probably started a fight, probably gotten arrested.

In this one, he’s still avoiding both his dead and his alive parents, but he’s got company on this balcony, he’s got Jason, and when his mother finds them a little later, A.J. actually turns his head to blow smoke away from her, turns back towards her, and stretches a smile across his face.

She doesn’t seem to really appreciate the effort, though, looks at him too seriously and tells him, “When you’ve finished throwing a tantrum, you’re wanted downstairs.”

A.J. thinks she should know this is so far from a tantrum from him—compared to some of the shit he pulled as a kid, it’s practically good behavior. He’s been away from home long enough, though, he guesses she’s forgotten. “I’ll be down in a minute, Ma,” he tells her, and waits for her to leave.

She does, but she doesn’t close the door behind her, so the sound of the gathering downstairs works its way into the background, and for a moment it feels so terribly, strangely familiar A.J. doesn’t know what to do. It feels like when he’d have a girl over in junior high or high school, and his mother would come upstairs, offer them something to eat, or ask A.J. a question, or introduce herself to the girl, and then pointedly not quite close the door behind her when she left.

A.J. takes a last drag on the cigarette, which has dwindled down to near the end, then drops it to the ground and crushes it out. Jason’s looking at him, all big, pale, serious eyes, so A.J. drags out the same smile he had for his mother and tells Jason, “I’ll buy your next pack, I swear.”

“Your mom hates me,” Jason says back, and it’s not what A.J. was expecting, but it’s probably true. A.J. isn’t sure whether it’s a gay thing or just a _Jason_ thing, either their weird, twisted up family history or just how Jason has that quiet way of looking at you like he can see right through you and out the other side. It’s possible that A.J.’s mom, who has never liked feeling dismissed, doesn’t find it as hot as he does.

“ _Your_ mom loves _me_ ,” A.J. gloats back, and Jason scowls, but he also sways closer, so A.J. doesn’t take it too seriously.

Jason’s mom is _wonderful_ , really, though A.J. thinks Jason’s step-dad is a bit of a tool. They came down to the city to do Thanksgiving at A.J. and Jason’s new place a couple of years ago, even brought along Jason’s baby sister, and it had felt almost stupidly Brady Bunch, but A.J. had found himself kind of loving it.

They’re actually staying with Jason’s family on this little jaunt home, which is incredibly bizarre, and when they got in, late last night, Jason’s mom had set Jason to help with the dishes, then made up the foldout couch for them, and given A.J. a hug, like he was meant to be sad that the bastard was dead. She hadn’t said she was sorry, probably because she wasn’t, and A.J. was glad. Yeah, Jason’s mom is alright.

A.J. snakes an arm around to rest on Jason’s back and opens his mouth, wanting to say something about the weird, knotted-up way he’s feeling today, but not sure where to start. “Jase,” he says, almost helplessly, as Jason leans closer and closer, till their foreheads almost touch and A.J. has to squint to look at him.

“You don’t owe them anything,” Jason tells him, low and rumbling and dangerous as the motorcycle that could kill him faster than the cigarettes ever will. A.J. takes his free hand and rests it lightly on Jason’s chest, till he can feel his heart beating.

“Jase,” he says again, and then, “You’ve got to—can we quit smoking?”

Jason laughs almost soundlessly, but A.J. can feel it in his ribcage, beneath A.J.’s hand. “You used to think the self-destruction thing was hot. I thought it was why you liked me.”

A.J.’s already regretting saying it, it’s not something he wants, not really, but there’s a reason he said it, anyway, and that reason is more important than the way Jason’s mouth looks when he’s skulking in the mouth of an alley, avoiding a party by chain-smoking furiously until A.J. catches up to him and is ready to leave. It’s entirely tied up in the way Jason laughed at him the first day they met for smoking menthols, though.

Yeah, Jason is really only in his life to begin with because A.J. saw him across the lunch room and thought he looked like danger, so A.J. went over to say hi, but there’s more to it now, has been for a long time. Almost since the beginning.

“You alive is hotter,” A.J. mumbles, hates that he’s mumbling, hates that this is what he’s saying, but it’s true just the same.

Jason must be able to feel the truth in it, because he lets out a short, sharp breath, closes the distance between them till their foreheads do touch, and slides his eyes closed slowly. “You’re supposed to be the bad influence, remember?”

A.J. doesn’t answer, he doesn’t think he’s supposed to. After a moment, Jason opens his eyes, pulls back an inch or two, and brings a hand up around A.J.’s wrist, where he’s still got his hand over Jason’s heart. “That’s a yes, by the way. Asshole.”

…

A.J. is twenty when he tracks Jason down, twenty and a little bit less awful than he was at seventeen, but no less angry, because sticking around while his dad rode the local politician thing as hard as he could for the last year and a half that A.J. had been a minor hadn’t exactly been a blast, but all of the functions and events he’d been expected to make an appearance at had given him a lot of time to think.

A lot of the time, he’d thought about Jason.

He thinks there’s probably something fucked in his brain, that he wants to see this guy again, this guy who shot him the last time he saw him. Shot him in the foot, sure, but still, shot him, eyes wide open, with an actual gun.

He’d also driven A.J.’s father out into the woods and scared the fuck out of him, but A.J. can’t blame him for that. If anything, it’s kind of impressive. A.J. has never managed to scare his father, and he tried for a long time.

He moves to the city, because he thinks that’s what you do when you’re young and angry, whether you’re from upstate or another state entirely, and he doesn’t do it to try to scare his dad, has been trying not to try to do that for the past few months, which, he thinks, is probably why this is what finally manages it.

He moves there and then he looks up Jason, because he’s been thinking about him long enough that it seems stupid not to, and finds him on facebook, of all places. The miracle of the times. Jason is living in the city, too, and A.J. wonders if that should surprise him more than it does.

The restaurant Jason works at is listed, and A.J. thinks about doing the private eye thing and staking the place out. Even when his roommate, who he mentions the idea to, calls him a stalker, he doesn’t really get discouraged from the idea. The only problem with the plan is that he keeps on not doing it.

After three weeks of getting two blocks away before turning back, or standing across the street and then changing his mind, A.J. is forced to admit he’s probably not going to do it that way. Part of him just keeps chickening out, and that part of him keeps winning, so finally, A.J. goes out one night, gets pretty buzzed, comes back to his room, signs on to facebook, and sends a private message.

_Hey, man, long time no see, but since we’re both in the city, want to chill sometime?_ The message is almost disgustingly casual, A.J. is pretty pleased with it, especially when it yields an invitation to stop by the restaurant Jason works at after his shift the next day.

…

“I wasn’t sure you were going to show up,” Jason tells him from the other side of the little metal table across from A.J., who shrugs.

“I didn’t think you were going to ask me to,” he tells Jason, who cracks a thin smile before he answers.

“I figured I probably owed it to you, after I shot you, and all.”

Jason looks different, a little, but not too much—he’s filled out a bit, in the face, in the shoulders, his skin is tanned a bit darker than the shade of milk-white basement-dweller he’d used to sport, like he spends more of his time outdoors these days. His hair is a little longer and curling a bit, sandy, washed-out brown to match the sharp-bright, washed-out gray of his eyes. Jason’s eyes still look like they could cut glass. Jason looks good, older—A.J.’s having a hard time looking away.

A.J. knows why he’s here, and it’s not to make some kind of big deal about the bullet that used to be inside his foot, or the way it had bled as A.J. lay there, drifting in and out of awareness, feeling it gush in even spurts with the time of his heart. _ker-thunk. ker-thunk._ A.J. doesn’t even remember it most of the time anymore, except for how it twinges sometimes before the weather changes. He tells Jason, “It’s cool, man,” but he’s not sure the whole sentiment comes across.

Jason scowls a little, asks, “It’s cool that I shot you?” and if A.J. were more sensitive, he might be hurt.

Instead, he bares his teeth and says, “You owed me one, I probably shouldn’t have put you in the hospital,” and there—two birds, one stone—he’s made the apology he regretted how he was never going to make even as he was beating Jason up—his fist had connected with bone and he’d thought about how there was never going to be a way of making things right with him, there was no burying this. He remembers thinking how it was too bad.

Jason’s in front of him now, though, he’s literally three feet away, and he’s smiling a little. A.J. sure was a fucking dumbass as a teenager. “Yeah, probably not,” Jason agrees, crooked smile stretched around crooked teeth. “I could tell you about why?” he offers. “I’m better at explaining that, better at actually knowing that, than I used to be.”

“Nah, I get it,” A.J. says, glad to hear it coming out sounding exactly as nonchalant as he meant it. “Dad and I had a little heart-to-heart when I was hospitalized, I know all about your crazy.”

“You sure about that?” Jason asks, cocking an eyebrow, and A.J. wants to bite the smirk off his face.

“Not sure at all,” he admits, smiling back.

After a second, Jason asks, “So what do you want, if it’s not to know why I shot you?”

He sounds genuinely curious, and A.J. isn’t sure whether that’s a good sign or a bad one. He asks, “What would you think I wanted, if I wasn’t me?”

Jason tilts his head to one side, considering. “If it wasn’t you, I’d say you were trying, and failing really hard, to ask me out.”

“Really failing that hard?” A.J. asks, unable to keep the plaintive note out of his voice.

“Pretty hard,” Jason tells him, still smiling a little. “Try again, Cross. Use your words.”

For once in his life, A.J. does what he’s told.

…

When they were driving up, A.J. was picturing a scene like at his grandfather’s funeral, with the sun beating down and everything growing taller all around them while the coffin sunk deeper into the ground. Which was stupid, A.J. knows, because that was in August, and this is February, and A.J. has had plenty of time to stare out the window at the filthy snow banks as Jason drove them up to Schenectady in the rented car.

He wouldn’t even let A.J. take a turn behind the wheel, because Jason is kind of old-fashioned at heart, and he was sure A.J. must have been grieving.

Also, Jason hasn’t driven a car once since he moved to the city five years ago.

“Neither have you, asshole,” A.J. had grumbled as he picked through the chip selection at the gas station. A.J. was pretty sure all Jason had driven since he ran away from home six months after he got his license was that motorcycle, which is pretty awesome, sure, but not exactly the same thing.

“Nah,” Jason told him as he’d reached behind A.J.’s questing fingers to snag the last bag of Funyuns on the shelf, “I had a car for a bit when I was living out in Cali.”

A.J. forgets about that bit, sometimes, the year or so after high school when he was going to community college and living back with his mom, trying to get his grades up enough to get _out_ , when Jason was out on the west coast, mostly dealing, from what A.J. can tell, getting himself almost killed on drugs and bikes until he had some sort of epiphany, came back east, and started waiting tables, working on his GED, and, before too long, meeting A.J. again.

“It’s still a while ago,” he had grumbled, knowing he sounded childish and not caring.

Jason had smiled at him, though, sharp and brief, and told him, “Shut up and give me your Junior Mints, we need to get back on the road.”

Now, they’re stepping into A.J.’s father’s hallway, in off the icy balcony, and A.J. has the sudden flash of understanding that he might never be back here again. He has put his father in the ground, he has said a handful of bland, respectful words to the crowd, if only because his mother asked him to, and she’s the one who had to plan her ex-husband’s funeral service, because A.J. couldn’t make it up soon enough (didn’t want to), and now, something is ended. A tie he’d been barely aware still existed has been cut. A.J. closes the door to the balcony behind them, and turns back to Jason, who is standing stock-still with a hand on the doorway of the room that was A.J.’s, when he lived here. The room Jason shot him in.

When he turns to glance back at A.J., his face is still and serious, and Jason can brood like no one else, but A.J. knows how to ward it off by now. His mom and his dad’s crowd of very local politicians and ex-cop buddies can wait a little while longer, A.J. steps closer, and again, until he’s peering into the room too, over Jason’s shoulder from behind him.

Jason is right _there_ , so A.J. wraps his arms around him, one across his stomach, just above the line of his belt, and the other higher, tighter, around the lowest tier of his ribs. Jason’s arms don't leave the door-frame, but he relaxes back into A.J. a bit, as A.J. leans his face down to breath damply into the starched line of the suit jacket over the join of Jason’s shoulder and neck.

“I know, it looks like a hotel room, doesn’t it?” A.J. asks, slipping a little levity into his tone. “But for real, man, I’ve gotta tell you, it didn’t look that different when I was living in it. Not a big decorator, dad.

Jason has always been just a hair taller than A.J., but built narrow, and that difference is never more apparent to A.J. than when Jason, who, A.J. is certain, could easily terrify anyone with half a brain when he’s feeling self-righteous, is feeling uncertain. Jason sags against A.J., and A.J. can feel his bones under his skin under his clothes when Jason says, voice rough, “We don’t usually talk about it—”

It’s true, they don’t. A.J. thinks he could probably stave off the conversation by reminding Jason that this is maybe not the time or the place—he could make it a guilt thing, essentially, and then maybe Jason would leave it alone. It is kind of a huge deal, though—most couples don’t have ‘that time you shot me’ stories to trot out at dinner parties.

“—Yeah,” A.J. cuts in. “Hey. Let’s sit, if we’re going to do this.” He doesn’t let go of Jason as he walks them over to the bed he hasn’t slept in in years, walks up close on Jason’s heels until he cracks a smile and shoves A.J. off, almost tripping over him, and then they’re sitting on the bed, which creaks, and A.J. wants Jason back in his arms, but he’s the one who made them come over and sit, so maybe he doesn’t get to complain.

He puts a hand on Jason’s knee, instead, and then starts to feel stupid, until Jason drops a hand down to cover A.J.’s, gripping his fingers tight.

It’s looking down at that grip that A.J. finds the voice to ask, “Would it make you feel better? To tell me, I mean.”

Jason laughs, at that, short and sharp, like a gunshot, which is a particularly bad comparison to be making, here, but A.J. doesn’t care, he doesn’t, he just cares that Jason is looking at him all cockeyed, all _what am I going to do with you?_ because A.J. can still take Jason by surprise, though it’s been years. He’s proud of that. Jason says, “It might, yeah. But this isn’t just about me, is it?”

It is, in a strange way, but not in the way that Jason means, so A.J. doesn’t say it, just squeezes Jason’s fingers and says, “Tell me.”

“It wasn’t even about you,” is what Jason comes out with, bursting, gushing, like breaking a dam.

“I know,” he tells Jason, because he did, he has for a long time.

“He killed my dad, and I thought—because you were his son. But then I couldn’t.”

“It could have been, though,” A.J. reminds him, as gentle as he has in him. “It could have been about me, at least a little—Jay, I used you.”

Now it’s Jason’s turn to answer, “I know,” but his smile is twitchy, nervous, very, very fake and A.J. doesn’t even know the point in faking a smile about this, the situation in no way calls for it. “I wish it had been. If you’re going to—if you’re going to lose your mind for a while, _shoot_ the person who’s going to be—who’s going to be your—it seems like it’s not … like it’s not even respectful, that it wasn’t about you. You were awful but I almost didn’t care, you were so far off my radar.”

That would be pretty shitty to hear, A.J. thinks, except that Jason looks so tortured about it that it’s almost funny. _Sorry I wasn’t mad at you when I shot you,_ A.J. thinks, amused, as he reaches out, touches Jason’s face, his ear, the back of his neck.

“There’s another thing we don’t talk about,” he tells Jason, feels Jason tense up beneath his hands, and it wasn’t meant to be a threat, wasn’t meant to be a bad thing, A.J. thinks he needs to keep talking until he hits upon the right thing, the thing that will make Jason breathe slower again. 

His fingertips brush Jason’s hairline across the back of his neck, and he goes on, “We don’t talk about how, you know, how I love you. Because before I met you I didn’t care about anything, and I didn't know anyone who cared about anything, and then there you were, and you cared about some things so _fucking_ much it should have scared me, but it didn’t because I was just so disbelieving that someone like you could even exist that I pushed, and I fucked things up, and I hurt you, and I couldn’t get you out of my head for years later, till I had to look you up.”

Jason breathes in, shaky, and says, “You’re right, we don’t talk about that.”

“And everything was fucked,” A.J. barrels on, because now that he’s started, he may as well finish. “It was—Jase, it was so fucked up, it’s amazing we both made it out alive, but we did. And we’re happy, or, you know, I think we are, and that’s why I don’t talk about it. Because what happened then doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah,” Jason agrees again, voice a little stronger, “I hear that. I do. I just…”

A.J. leans forward, kisses him across the bed A.J. first got himself off thinking about Jason in, and Jason pulls back after a second, just and inch or two, to whisper against his skin, “We are happy. It’s not just you that thinks so.”

A.J. had been almost sure, but it’s still good to hear out loud.


End file.
